Twelve Sayings That Could Change Your Life

Pushkin. When we think about the factors that affect our happiness, we often focus on the big stuff, things like finding the perfect relationship or doing work that gives us a sense of purpose. But we often forget that the little things can matter a lot too. A well timed joke, a touching song lyric, and especially a memorable quote. These are the sorts of things that can instantly lift our

So I'm Gretchen Rubin. I am so happy to be talking to you today.

Gretchen is a best selling author, the acclaimed host of the podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin, and one of my favorite experts on the nuances of human nature. Gretchen has just released a new book entitled Secrets of Adulthood. In it, Gretchen offers a reader's practical insights for navigating the daily challenges that come with being a functional grown up in the modern world. But Krutchen manages to share these helpful

There were a couple of things that came together. One is, I am a writer, and I do feel it sometimes an idea, maybe just one sentence, will cross our path and suddenly we see the way forward, or suddenly we have insight into a situation in a way that's really illuminating. And I had really been pushing myself over the years to write aphoristically, meaning trying to convey big ideas in

But you did this in the form of these aphorisms. So what is an aphorism?

We all know proverbs, and a proverb is like a piece of folk wisdom, like a stumble may prevent a fall, like nobody's associated with that. That's just like a thing we all say, and then an aphorism is when somebody says something like Mark Twain said it, Marcus Aurelius or Montaigne. One of the biggest challenges is pronouncing everybody's name.

Lily is cirrus all that.

My own favorite afforts is Marie von Ivna Eschenbach, who nobody else remembers. But I'm going to try to bring her back into fashion because I love hers so Like one of her aphorisms that I love is you can fall so fast you think you're flying.

That's like right, it's like whoa.

But so she said that, So that's an aphorism because we attribute that to her she said it in that way. Now, one of the things about affortism, and you know this from studying happiness, all of the most important insights are too important to be true. If there's some fresh insight, you're like, that's probably wrong because we've been studying this for thousands of years, great minds in history.

I've been looking at this.

But people say it in a fresh way, or they have a new metaphor, or they say it in a way that particularly resonates with a particular person. So a lot of times it's finding that fresh way to convey an insight.

It's creatively exciting.

You know, It's like writing a haikup or doing a thirty minute sitcom. It sparks your creativity to have a constraint, and it also really forced my thinking to clarify. First I had to understand it, then I had to whittle it down. So it was very creatively interesting in that way. And I wanted ones that were truly secrets of adulthood where I felt like there was some insight about like making a decision or ending procrastination, or dealing with relationships.

I feel like there's room for a challenge of one you couldn't get the right words for. We had to post it online and see if somebody can come up with a good short saying.

For Oh, that's a good idea, like.

Say this in a more elegant way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

I should go through and look for some of my clunkers and see if somebody can crack it.

As you're talking about this, it seems like aphorisms are really cool, Like it seems like the kind of thing we might see like as a little Pinterest meme. Yes, but it also feels kind of like old school, Yes, Afrist you mentioned feel like they were around in the ancient times, Like if you're one of the only people I know who's writing aphorisms today and so am I wrong? Are they kind of old school? You're bringing them back? Like what's the goal? A little bit of both.

There are modern aphorsts like Sarah Manguso who's writing today, and there are some other ones. Warren Buffett is a great aphorist, But you're right, it's a very ancient form

One of the things I found kind of surprising was how many of the aphorisms in your book are actually paradoxes in their own way. They kind of like tell you both things at once, which I was like, huh, Like they're kind of philosophically deeper than I was sort of expecting.

No, I'm very I have a whole section just on paradoxes, and a lot of times the opposite of a profound truth is also true, and paradoxes are interesting because they really make us step back, they surprise us, Like I think one of my favorite book titles of all time is All Joy and No Fun, which is Jennifer Senior's book about parenting. It just makes you step back and

I think also the confusion and the surprise of those paradoxes gets us to reflect a little bit more, like, Yeah, so these short statements, but I found myself, even after reading your book, walking around with some of them and like thinking about them a little bit more instead.

Of because some of these I think people will disagree with and that's okay, because again, it's to prompt your own reflection and your own insight.

And so you've collected a whole set of these for problems as diverse as feeling happier, making tough decisions, handling temptations, even housekeeping. And when we get back from the break, I'm going to chat with you about my top twelve from your book.

I cannot wait.

Author Podcaster and happiness expert Gretchen Rubin has a gift for crafting clever aphorisms, short powerful sayings that capture life's truths in a memorable way. Per new book, Secrets of Adulthood is packed with these insightful one liners. And today we're diving into my top twelve. My first of my favorite twelve aphorisms in the book is one that's about happiness. It is the aphorism happiness doesn't always make us feel happy.

Okay, so you're the perfect person to talk about this because you approach the scientifically. Now, approaching the scientifically, you cannot say that, because you have to say I have to define what happiness is and what happiness isn't and

No, I love this. It actually fits with what researcher Sonya Bermirsky calls two parts of happiness. She says, happiness is about being happy in your life and with your life. And I think the like feeling happy part is the happiness in your life. It's like your sense of positive emotion and a lack of negative emotion. Yes, exactly, But being happy with your life is the happiness part, and the aphorism, it's kind of the overall living up to

And I think this explains a lot of what some people think is sort of a paradoxical thing about children, where people are like, if you look at people's happiness when they're children, a lot of times they're not very happy.

They're annoyed, they're stressed out.

But then if you say what makes you happy, people say, children make me happy. And it's like, because happiness doesn't always make us feel.

Happy, Okay, so can I do another way that happiness doesn't always make us feel happy?

Absolutely?

I think this is a deep way of conveying this idea of hedonic adaptation, the fact that we get used to stuff.

Ooh, I hadn't thought of it that way.

Yeah, you know, so you hit the lottery, you get married, you get the promotion at.

Work, you get air conditioning, you get elevators.

Right, and you have this moment of this awesome thing comes in and you think this is going to make me feel happier, but then you don't actually feel as happy as you think.

Interesting, Laurie, I have to say I never thought of that myself, even though I I wrote it.

So see you're already taking me deeper. I love it. That's a whole different way of interpreting it.

Okay, So now we go into aphorism number two about the social world. This one rang deep for me. We care for many people we don't particularly care for. I care for so many people I don't particularly care for.

And that's one thing where just reading it, you're like, yeah, I think you said I'm sending people are confused, like why is this person in my life if I don't really enjoy their company or we don't have anything in common, or you know, all we have is our childhood, And it's like, but we care for many people we don't particularly care for.

Yeah. I'm feeling this right now because we just had a midterm for my happiness class that I teach at Yale. Oh and the students totally bomb the mid term, and I'm kind of both annoyed and mad at them, like why didn't you study? Why didn't you get it? But also like I want them to learn. I'm going to put lots of effort into kind of helping them. And I feel like this happens so much in so many

So and I think when you say something in a really concise way, it kind of allows more interpretation because less is spelled out, more can be put in.

Yeah, And I think with this one, it reminds me that the frustration, the fact that I'm feeling so upset about kind of putting the time in is because I care for them. It almost let me take a breath back of like, oh, it's because I love my students. It's because I love these people that I'm putting time into so.

Right, the reason you're so annoyed is because you do care for them.

Yeah, okay, that's the social world. I had a bunch that I loved that were basically aphorisms about self talk strategies. I don't know if you think of them that way, but that's how I thought.

I don't, so I'm intrigued to hear what that is.

So number three, repeatedly rehearsing disaster doesn't protect us from it. Yes, this one was one that I needed to hear because I am someone who repeatedly rehearses disaster a lot inside my head. I'm curious some of your favorite strategies to nip that rehearsing of terrible things in the bud.

One of the things I like to do is to make a list, because I feel like part of why I ruminate is just my brain is like, don't forget, don't forget, don't forget, don't forget. And if I write it down then I'm like, Okay, it's memorialized somewhere and so my brain can let go of it. Then I do that whole thing about like, well, what's the worst that can happen? Like the worst that could happen is like I missed my flight, Okay, then what would happen. Well,

I'm not traveling with a toddler, so it could be worse.

And also just reminding myself that I think sometimes we fall into this kind of superstitious belief that if we really rehearse something, we kind of will offset it. It's sort of protective magic, and that just isn't the case. I Mean, it's one thing to be prepared for something like I live in Los Angeles.

I'm going to have my go bag ready.

But if I'm just constantly going over and over in my mind, then that's that's not doing anything.

There is no protective magic that I'm invoking.

Yeah. One of my favorite studies to share with my students is by my former colleague Susan Nolan Huxima, and she is the study where she looks at the level of rumination that students go through, either by kind of telling them to ruminate or just saying not to ruminate.

Then there's also scheduling time to worry where you you're like, I'm going to worry about this from three to three thirty tomorrow afternoon, and other than that, I'm not going to worry about it.

That can work too sometimes.

Okay, Now getting to self talk, strategy and aphorism number four one day now will be a long time ago. Yes, this hit me in two ways. One is really brought up all the strategies that I talk with my colleague Ethan Cross about his idea of what's called distant self talk that you sort of, you know, project yourself into the future. What's this going to feel like ten years from now, what's this going to feel like five years from now? It's just not going to feel that bad.

Both are true.

You want to relish what there is, but then also remember that you could put things in perspective.

Okay, that was number four, Now I get to number five. This one was like really hit me in the like cognitive science, soul because there's so many studies on this. Love this one. It is by changing our words we can change our perspective. Yeah, so good.

I'm a huge fan of reframing. It is Banana's how much it matters? Because I used to think like the situation is the situation, and like you kind of ca aunt change the situation just by the way that you talk about it. But in fact, it's wild to me how much a change.

I mean.

The classic example is do you have to do it or do you get to do it? Yes, that's huge. Do you play piano or practice piano? Do you have social time, or do you network. There are so many ways where you can reframe something and really change your attitude toward it. I remember when my daughter was young, and when you have a newborn, you have to go to the pediatrician all the time, and I was complaining to my husband, Oh my god, you get all these

Call my mother. I bet she'd do it.

And I was like, oh, no way, I want to be the one to do it. So I wanted to complain about it. But the minute somebody said, oh, you don't have to do it, I was like, no, no, no, no, no, I want to do it. And it just showed me how quickly you can reframe something.

I also love it, just like how the power of words and the way the words are structured can change our perspective. Like there's some evidence, for example, that if you say you use the example of playing piano, if you say, oh, yeah, I play piano versus I'm a piano player, like, it completely changes your own identity about these things. Yeah, so this is one I've been trying to use of, like I am a healthy eater. Now I'm trying to eat healthy, Like I am a healthy eater.

Right, Like, what does a writer do? A writer write?

So you can't be a writer who like actually never writes, and you become a writer by writing.

But sometimes we have these identities in our head when we don't act on them a lot. I know this is something you talk a lot about in your habit book, right, Yes, actually putting it into practice is helpful. And if we can hack that with something as simple as changing the word we use, like, that's so easy, so powerful.

Absolutely.

So that was number five. Now we get to number six, self talk strategy, Accept yourself and expect more from yourself.

This took me a really long time to understand because on the one hand, and then you know, you know all the research about self compassion and self acceptance, and that's clearly true. But on the other hand, it's also true that you don't want to be complacent. You want to be willing to put yourself out of your comfort zone. We're happier when we live in an atmosphere of growth, when we're growing, when we're learning, when we're changing, when

Yeah, and some of your books we talk about just like being Gretchen, and I feel like this is kind of part and parcela that accept yourself but also expect more of yourself. You kind of want to get back to what's the authentically Gretchen thing to do, and sometimes that might be giving up whatever, you know, crazy plan you have to try to improve yourself, but sometimes being authentically you might be No, I got to like nudge myself a little bit further.

Yeah, And I think it's frustrating sometimes because it's really hard to know sometimes where the line is, and nobody else can really answer that for you. It's sort of like, Okay, well, meditation hasn't been going that well for me. Should I say, hey, meditation isn't a tool that works for me, or or should I stick with it? And kind of only you can figure that out. It's just so hard to know ourselves right, And I think this is where these self compassion strategies can actually be helpful.

You know, Kristin f who talks about self compassion, talks about talking to yourself like you would a friend. Sometimes for me that strategy helps me kind of like toggle this line pretty well, like if your friend is like kind of being a little lazier, not pushing themselves, or if they're pushing themselves too hard. You can often see it with a friend of like, nah, I think you're being a little self indulgent, let me kind of nudge you, versus like you are taking a way too much, like

Well, it's something my sister calls me a happiness bully, because if I think that there's a way for you to like push into that zone, I will often like be very enthusiastically encouraging you to do it.

Slash bullying. Slash bullying.

Now you know.

And then there's another afforism, which is love is unconditional, but love is all also demanding. Love loves you just as you are, and love expects the best from you. And so sometimes it's like again, these lines can sometimes be difficult to see, and yet they're very.

Very important.

So we've gone through a bunch already. But when we get back from the break, we're going to turn to some aphorisms about how to get stuff done and how to get through tough times. The Happiness Lab. We'll be right back. Today we're breaking down my favorite aphorisms in Gretchen Rubin's new book, Secrets of Adulthood. Before the break, we tackled Gretchen's quotes about happiness and self talk. Now we'll turn to Gretchen's observations about two problems that I

That is it, Because it really doesn't matter what your good intentions are. And I think sometimes good intentions can even be draining and discouraging because if you keep making them and then they don't turn into practical actions, then they can kind of weigh you down. Whereas if you never thought about it at all, you would be skipping through your life not feeling like there was something you

And I love this idea of practical action because I think it reminds us not just good intentions to mean nothing unless they inspire action. Throwing that practical word in there, I think is helpful because it's like it's going to be practical. It can't be like, you know, I haven't exercised in the last three years, and then tomorrow I'm going to run a marathon. It has to actually fit your real life. It has to fit your boundary conditions

Oh good.

Don't expect to be motivated by motivation.

And I think the word motivation is very confusing because motivation conflates the idea that you very much want to achieve an aim and that you're doing work toward that aim. And in my experience, people are often extraordinarily desirous of an aim, they desperately want to achieve that a and yet they're not doing anything to give themselves towards that aim.

So are they motivated or not motivated? I don't know. Don't expect to be motivated by motivation.

Yeah, I think one of the frustrating things about motivation is that whatever we mean by this word motivation, and I agree with you, there's like too many different parts to it. Yeah, Sometimes it just comes naturally, Like I've like such a sugar craving and I don't have to do any work to seek out sweet, fatty food, right the way that works. The way that kind of craving works.

That's why I just don't think motivation is a helpful word. It's too loose.

It gets into this whole thing where like sometimes we want to do something but we don't really want to do.

It, or we don't really want to do it, but we want to do it. It just gets very, very confusing. So I just say stay clear of that word.

And maybe we get a hint about how we can do better from aphorism number nine, which is one of the best uses of willpower is to avoid situations that require willpower.

Oh yes, Oh my gosh.

I don't know where this one came from, but this is basically just straight out of Aristotle. Like, this one's really ancient. Aristotle thought that the way you have willpower is you set up situations that you don't really need it at all. You set to up situations so that basically, your only reasonable course of action is to do the thing that, at your very highest value level, you wanted to do the most well.

When I wrote my book about habits better than before, that's was just the deepest thing, which is like everything should be a habit, Everything should be operating on automatic so that you're not deploying what po like I have a strong sweet tooth too. It sounds like you have a big sweet tooth. So I just gave up sugar. It's easier for me to just say, like I don't need sugar. And then it's like do I eat this cupcake? No, because I don't need sugar. Do I eat this piece of free can eat?

No?

Because I don't need sugar. Then I don't need any wallpower, because once you've done it for like not even that long, your brain is just like, oh, that's not for me, and it just kind of fades into the background.

So it sounds like your situation there is really like using words again as we talked about before, to sort of set up like I am not a sugar eater. I just kind of get rid of it. My move is situation support, Like I just don't have any sugar in my house when I'm trying to avoid this sort of thing.

You don't have to resist the ice cream in the freezer because there's no ice cream in the freezer.

Yes, yes, physical situation support, but I also love to use social situation support, right, which is like hang out with other people who aren't going to like demand that we go to ice cream shop or you know, hang out with other people who buy their own behavior, model this and make this easy for me. And that's actually what Aristotle thought of. He said, you actually get virtue from other people because your friends are your virtuous selves.

You know.

It's just it's something like with sugar.

It was so noisy, It was so boring to have that in my head all the time, and I just remember, like it would just be there, buzzing in my mind. Is there there, It's there, And then I could just decide to turn it off.

That is like your superpower, because like I've tried to decide many times to shut it off, but my brain just doesn't work.

Like that's it.

Never again. I have to like restructure my environment and be around people who help.

And yeah, everybody has to kind of experiment to see what works for them because we all are all very different, and there's a lot of different ways to approach it.

Although, can I tell you a puzzle about this willpower aphorism, which is that I have this former student, Ariela Crystal, who's been looking at the consequences of how people judge people who use these different strategies. And a curious thing that she finds is that even though we know that setting up these situation supports help you, she finds that people like people who exert the willpower rather than set

Or maybe they think that Phil's way is more realistic and therefore is more of a challenge to themselves. Interesting, yeah, because if they're like, well, I'm want some bob that can just go off and do it.

So clearly that doesn't reflect on me.

I mean, many people, when they start making their habits better, the people around them are often not very supportive, right, because they start saying to themselves like maybe I should be doing this.

And I don't want to.

So it might be that it makes them feel worse about themselves.

Now jumping to number ten, aphorism about getting stuff done. Focus on actions not outcomes. You update this to me and don't try to learn to play the guitar. Just play the guitar for twenty minutes every day. This is very Yoda, who I think has a different aphorism, which is do or do not There is no try.

Yeah, because a lot of times people will say things like, well, I want to write a best selling novel. Well, you can't control whether something is a bestseller, right, that's something other people have to do. And you can't even control whether you can publish a novel, but you can write. People tend to have vague outcomes. People will say them

That's something where you're like, did you do it? Did you not do it?

And that's a way to get more fun out of life. Or I'm going to practice my Italian half an hour a day. You can measure it. You know whether you did it or didn't do it, so you get a feeling of satisfaction. It's taking you toward your aim. But otherwise these aims are just so big and vague. It's like on any one day you're not going to have done it. It's very hard to even know if you're making progress.

Yeah, it reminds me of what researchers often call these smart goals. Yes, smart is this acronym that stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. The actions can be very specific. You can measure whether you did them or not. You know it that you can do them. Yes, you can set a time limit on them so you know exactly when

Exactly because you may never be fluent in Italian, but you're good enough to, like, you know, go to Italy and talk to the waiter.

I can order a canoli.

Yeah.

So I think that that's why it's better to focus on your actions than on your outcomes.

And so those were some pieces of advice for getting stuff done. My final two favorite aphorisms are pieces of advice we can use in tough times, starting with number eleven. Sometimes, to keep going, we need to allow ourselves to stop. This one, you know, especially in times when I was experiencing lots of burnout myself reminding myself about the need

Right. Sometimes you just think if I just go, go, go, go go, I will just power through it, and then you just become more and more drained and overwhelmed and unfocused. I'm a big believer in a good night's sleep. I mean, if there is a cliche that I live by. It's everything looks better after good night sleep. I'll get a bed at seven forty five if I'm having a really really bad day because I'm like, I just need this day to be over. I'll feel better in the morning.

And so final piece of advice for tough times in my final aphorism, which I really loved, things often get messier before they get tidier. Yes, I've literally since I read this aphorism, told this to four different people in my life who are going through various tough times and various moments of untidiness. So true, but we forget that things getting a little bit worse isn't necessarily a sign

Yeah, I mean, this is one of those that's literally true and also metaphorically true, because it's literally true if you've ever tried to like clean out your closet, but it's also very metaphorically true if you're trying to do something like switch careers or change a relationship or something a lot of times it can get very messy before it gets cleared up.

I think it's also like even locally, like trying to get through a tough emotion. Right, I've been trying to engage in all these practices I tell my students about, you know, sitting with and accepting your emotions and when you decide to do that. Wow, does it feel messy when you're sitting with sadness? Or wow does it feel messy when you're really noticing that overwhelmed. Yeah, but if you give yourself time to do that, then all of a sudden, Oh, you wind up in a much better place. Yes,

Of the book.

Well, this is so fun for me to hear which ones resonated with you, especially since you yourself are such a happiness expert.

It's fun to see what cut your off.

Want to learn more or they want to hear more from you. Where should they go?

Well, they can got to a Happier cast dot com, slash secrets, and then there's all kinds of information about the books and excerps and you can see the cover and order it if you want, or you can just wherever books are sold.

And just to recap my favorite of Gretchen's aphorisms. Number one, happiness doesn't always make us feel happy. Number two. We care for many people we don't particularly care for. Number three. Repeatedly rehearsing disaster doesn't protect us from it. Number four. One day now will be a long time ago. Number five. By changing our words, we can change our perspective. Number six. Accept yourself and expect more from yourself. Number seven. Good